“I’m trying to get on my feet,” he said. “I’ll probably go back to school to learn auto mechanics or something like that.”
“I got a friend livin’ in a house I own on One-sixteen,” I said.
“Primo. He’s a mechanic. If I ask him I’m sure he’ll show you the ropes.”
Rhone had been a salesman brokering advertising deals with companies that didn’t have offices in Los Angeles. But he had a new life now, or at least the old life was over and he was waiting on Etta’s porch for the new one to kick in.
“Don’t take my boy away from me so quick, Easy,” Etta said.
“You know he earns his keep just workin’ round the house here.”
Peter flashed a smile. I could see that he liked being kept on the back porch by EttaMae.
“You know where I can find Mouse?” I asked.
“No,” Etta said.
Peter shook his head.
“Well okay then,” I said. “I got to find him, so if he calls tell him that. And if Bonnie or Jesus call just tell ’em to stay away until I say they can come back.”
“What’s goin’ on, Easy?” Etta asked, suddenly suspicious.
“I just need a little help on somethin’.”
“Be careful now,” she said. “I kicked him out but that don’t mean I want him in a casket.”
“Etta, how you expect somebody like me to be a threat to him?”
I asked even though I had once nearly gotten her man killed.
“You the most dangerous man in any room you in, Easy,” she said.
I didn’t argue with her assessment because I suspected that she might be right.
1 7 9
28
There was a place called Hennie’s on Alameda. It took up the third floor of a building that occupied an entire block.
That building once housed a furniture store before the riots depleted its stock. Hennie’s wasn’t a bar or a restaurant; it wasn’t a club or private fraternity either — but it was any one of those things and more at different times of the week. It had a kitchen in the back and round folding tables in the hall. One evening Hennie’s would host a recital for some church diva from a local choir; later that same night there might be a high-stakes poker game for gangsters in from St. Louis. There had been retirement parties for aldermen and numbers runners there. It was an all-purpose room for a select few.
You never went to Hennie’s unless you’d been invited. At least I never did. For some people the door was always open. Mouse was one of them.
1 8 0
C i n n a m o n K i s s
Marcel John stood at the downstairs alley door that led up to Hennie’s. Marcel was a big man with a heavyweight’s physique and an old woman’s face. He had a countenance of sad kind-liness but I knew that he’d killed half a dozen men for money before coming to work for Hennie. He wore an old-fashioned brown woolen suit with a gold watch chain in evidence. A purple flower drooped in his lapel.
“Marcel,” I said in greeting.
He raised his head in a half-inch salutation, watching me with those watery grandmother eyes.
“Lookin’ for Mouse,” I said.
I’d said those words so many times in my forty-six years that they might have been an incantation.
“Not here.”
“He needs to be found.”
Marcel’s wide nostrils flared even further as he tried to get the scent of my purpose. He took in a deep breath and then nodded. I walked past him into the narrow stairway that went upward without a turn, to the third-floor entrance on the other side of the building.
When I neared the top the ebony wood door swung open and Bob the Baptist came out to meet me.
Bob the Baptist’s skin was toasted gold. His features were neither Caucasian nor Negroid. Maybe his grandmother had been an Eskimo or a Hindu deity. Bob was always grinning. And I knew that if he hadn’t gotten the signal from Marcel he would have been ready to shoot me in the forehead.
“Easy,” Bob said. “What’s your business, brother?”
“Lookin’ for Mouse.”
“Not here.” Bob, who was wearing loose white trousers and a blue box-cut shirt, twisted his perfect lips to add, Oh well, see you later.
1 8 1
W a lt e r M o s l e y
“He needs finding,” I said, knowing that even the self-important employees of Hennie’s wouldn’t want to cross Raymond Alexander.
He had to let me in but he didn’t have to like it.
“You armed?” he asked, the godlike grin wan on his lips.
“Yes I am,” I said.
He sniffed, considering if I was a threat, decided I was not, and moved aside.
Hennie’s was mostly one big room that took up nearly the entire floor. It was empty that day. As I walked from Bob’s post to the other side my footfalls echoed, announcing my approach.
Hennie was sitting at a small round table against the far wall.
There was a brandy snifter in front of him, also the Los Angeles Examiner, opened to the sports page. He had a half-smoked cigar smoldering in a cut crystal ashtray.
He was a dapper soul, wearing a dark blue suit, an off-white satin shirt, and a red tie held down by a pearl tack. The shirt was so bright that it seemed to flare from his breast. His hair was close-cropped and his skin was black as an undertaker’s shoes.
“I’m readin’ the paper,” he said, not inviting me to sit. He didn’t even look up to meet my eye.
“You see Mouse in there?” I took out my pack of Parliaments and produced a cigarette, which I proceeded to light.
“Raymond didn’t leave me any messages for you, Easy Rawlins.”
“The message is for him,” I said.
He finally looked up.
“What is it?” Hennie’s eyes had no sparkle to them whatsoever, giving the impression that he had seen such bad times that all of his hope had died.
“It’s for Mouse,” I said.
1 8 2
C i n n a m o n K i s s
Hennie stared at me for a few seconds and then called out,
“Melba!”
“Yes, Daddy,” a high-toned woman’s voice called back.
She came into a doorway about ten feet away.
“Bring me the phone.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
Melba belonged with that crew. Her skin was the color of a reddish-brown plantain. Her breasts were small but her butt was quite large. She balanced precariously on high heels that were on their way to becoming stilts. The black dress was midthigh and she walked with a circular movement which made even that pedestrian activity seem like dancing.
She brought a black phone on an extremely long cord. If she’d wanted to she could have dragged it all the way to Bob the Baptist’s chair.
She offered the phone to Hennie.
He declined, saying, “Dial Raymond.”
She did so, though she seemed to have some difficulty maintaining her balance and dialing at the same time.
The moments lagged by.
“Mr. Alexander?” she asked in her child’s voice. “Hold on, I got Daddy on the line.”
She handed the receiver to Hennie. He took it while staring at my forehead.
“Raymond? . . . I got Easy Rawlins here sayin’ that you need findin’. . . . Uh-huh . . . uh-huh. . . . You got that thing covered for Julius? . . . All right then. Talk to you.”
He handed the receiver back to Melba and she sashayed away.
“You know the funeral parlor down on Denker?” Hennie asked me.
1 8 3
W a lt e r M o s l e y
“Powell’s?”
“Yeah. There’s a red house next door that got a garage behind it. Raymond’s in the apartment above that.”
“Thank you,” I said taking in a deep draft of smoke.
“And don’t come here no more if I don’t ask ya,” he added.
“So you sayin’ that if I’m lookin’ for Raymond don’t ask you?” I asked innocently.
And Hennie winced. I liked that. I liked it a lot.
i d r o v e
from Hennie’s to Powell’s funeral parlor. I marched down the driveway to the garage next door. But there I stopped.